Autodesk, Design, Technology, and more blog.

24 January 2013

Computer Reboot and Tech-xersism

Not a normal reboot by any means but actually a new drive and starting from the fresh Operating System and rebuilding as well a performing a tech-xersism to rid the machine of evil bits and bytes. I had to reinstall everything to get back to where I was before my drive and OS decided to get sick or possessed by ancient evil spirited code for the past two weeks seriously hobbling my ability to work between crashes, lockups and blue screens. I am very rough on hardware due to all the unreleased technology I install and uninstall or the crazy things I research and try as well as travel incidents like last year in remote Northern Turkana basin Kenya and having to place my laptop on blocks of ice due to the 115+ degree heat, and then AU 2011 where static electricity built up from all the walking and then I touched my laptop while it was running and the motherboard fried.

One of the biggest challenges when rebuilding your machine is knowing what your hardware is, what is installed, and what are you registration keys for the installed application. You can do it manually but that could seriously take forever and I found a free tool from a company that sells enterprise tools that give a tool for individuals to use to create a report of more details of your computer than you could ever do manually. From all your hardware details, OS and updates, driver versions, software and keys, to a list of the installed software you are not using frequently.I looked very closely into the tool to make sure it was not a scam tool or transmitted my data to their servers which it did not and was amazing to document my laptop hardware and software.

One other thing I did when rebuilding my laptop is that I went with a Solid State Drive “SSD” instead of a standard drive. My bootup time of Windows from the power being off to logged in and ready to rock went from about 90 seconds to around 14 seconds with the same software installed. A SSD drive has no mechanical parts and is essentially flash memory like your cameras, iPads, and smartphones use. I am blown away at how fast a laptop can be running completely on a SSD drive.